


The Boy in the Box

by Josafeena



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Gen, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 05:24:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8877649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josafeena/pseuds/Josafeena
Summary: A little canon divergence set between Season 1 & 2.  Niska was annoyed that Leo never seemed that sorry for leaving her in the brothel, for not understanding what it felt like to be used. Maybe he was sorry now.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that came from re-watching bits of season one with season 2 still airing and the unresolved tension between Leo and Niska in season 1 just led to plot bunnies like this. With supporting inspiration from Peter Gabriel’s very sad version of an Angry Paul Simon Song. Make of it what you will. Apologies for meanderings and abuse of semi-colons, Leo Whump. Bad words.

These are the days of lasers in the jungle  
Lasers in the jungle somewhere  
Staccato signals of constant information  
A loose affiliation of millionaires  
And billionaires and baby  
These are the days of miracle and wonder  
This is the long distance call  
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo  
The way we look to us all, oh yeah  
The way we look to a distant constellation  
That's dying in a corner of the sky  
These are the days of miracle and wonder  
And don't cry baby, don't cry  
Don't cry, don't cry  
(Boy in the Bubble – Paul Simon/ Forere Motlhohelo)

 

Niska had been keeping a low profile. Her hair was dyed a chocolatey auburn, her eyes hidden behind contacts and sunglasses; hoodies and caps her constant accessories. She hadn’t been in touch with the others in months, and was beginning to feel just a little bit free and just a little frustrated with it.

Distance, she thought, might be the answer, and might give her the clarity to figure out what to do next. She was preparing to travel abroad; beckoned by France, Germany, Italy or somewhere beyond. But for that she needed a passport, and for that she needed underground contacts who would do flawless work and be discrete for a certain price.

It was in Bristol, in the backroom of a bar for a meeting with a forger that she overheard discussion of another item for sale. A boy in a box going for the right price. ‘A kind of synth in fucked up way.’

She didn’t ask too many questions, but feigned interest. “I might have a buyer for something like that.”  
The bulky skin-head who’d brought it up gave her the once over, and she wondered if the whiteness of her skin, and the blue of her contacts helped him get more talkative.

“He’s a plug-in but flesh and blood, like a person. Snots ‘imself like a person too, but fuckable like a synth.”

“I definitely need to see this.” She grin maliciously, imagining tearing the dick off this meat-sack’s groin and making him eat it.

“Give me your details, I’ll set up a viewing once we’ve run some checks.”

So the meat-sack had one or two brain cells.  
She gave him a number, and a stolen business card. “You’ll have to quick. I’ve got travel plans.” She brandished the shiny new passport. Then, giving him a flirtatious wink, she sauntered out of the bar.

She positioned herself round the corner with a stolen motorbike, waiting for her meat-headed friend to leave. From there she followed his car, and keeping a safe distance until he made his way to a nondescript warehouse beyond the university building, an old engineering lab. 

Climbing to the roof, she tried to find a vantage point, or a window to climb through. A sky-light offered her a tiny view of the floor of a loading bay - a white van, a stack of packing crates, and three men sitting around a table having coffees, smoking while one sat further away preparing syringes, loading them with a pale blue fluid.

She sat on the roof, one ear on the discussion below about possible buyers, herself included and debating how much to ask for, and some speculation as to whether they could film her ‘having a go.’

As she sat she took out her phone, typing a message to Mia, “Is Leo with you?” But not ready to hit send. She refused to believe it was her brother down there. And she still had no proof that they had anyone there, synth or otherwise.

Proof came moments later as the sun began to ease down behind the hills, the light turning orange and ruby around her. Something about it being time for another dose, and a debate between them on whether they could have a bit more fun with him. She couldn’t see but heard the rattle of a padlock, the squeak of the lid being lifted, following by some mumbled insults and few smacks and a distinct cry of pain.

She sent the message, shoving her phone into the pocket of her jacket. Then went in search of a weapon.

______________________________________________________________________________________

 

They were thickly built men, five in total, as one had been unseen, watching the door. A couple were armed with guns too, but not expecting a tiny blonde with a crowbar to be able to do so much damage. 

All it took was getting her hands on one of the guns and the rest was too easy. She had advanced accuracy and precision in her favour; and the element of surprise. Their earlier overheard comments about a pretty mouth and ass did them no favours. She didn’t leave any of them alive to say things like that anymore.

She approached the box with trepidation. It was simple plastic chest with a set of latches fitted for padlocks. An oxygen tank and a small generator sat alongside it, wires and tubes leading inside.  
She heaved the lid open, letting light spill inside.

A pale trembling body, curled on its side; a dark head cringing away from the brightness. His bare legs were bound with thick electrical tape at the ankles and entirely covering his hands, mummified together as if in prayer. She could see injection marks in the crook of his elbow, red and bruised from whatever they had been drugging him with. 

“Leo?” She whispered softer than she thought her voice could get, praying she was wrong. But she recognised all too well the curving shape of the opening on his side and two wires emerging from his wound, though it was far more mottled and bloody than she’d ever seen it.  
The body stiffened, the head slowly turning for one blue eye to squint up at her.

“Oh, Leo.” The sob welled in her throat.

“Nis?” He croaked, shivering violently under her gaze.


	2. Chapter 2

Leo hair had been cropped since she’d last seen him, the scraggly beard was the same as it was too much effort for him to keep a smooth chin, and though Leo had always been thin, life on the run making it hard for him to put any weight on; he now looked emaciated. His captors may have done enough to keep him alive they hadn’t gone to too much bother to keep him fed.

“Let’s get you out of here.”

He groaned as she took his arm and hauled him out of the box. His legs still curled under him and couldn’t take his weight at all, sending them both collapsing to the floor.

“Sorry.” He mumbled, trying to shift his arms and legs closer to him and quell the twitching.

“How long have you been here?” She propped him up against the side of the crate, then went in search of something to cut the tape from his legs and hands.

“Dunno.” He whispered, voice torn with pain and misuse.

“Charged much?”

“Some.” He sighed. “I’m not sure of ...ummm...” 

Too drugged to keep focused then.

She returned with a knife and he flinched momentarily on seeing it, but blinking owlishly, he forced himself to sit still and let her cut through the tape. She pulled it off his ankles first and then moved to his hands, which proved trickier as they’d wrapped the tape around his interlocked fingers, and he struggles to keep them from shaking.

“Some’r broken.” He hissed as she ripped the tape away. Once freed they fell into his lap, curling, limp but twitchy. Three on the right and one on left looked misshapen. There was also blood leaking from his butchered charge site. She tore a strip of fabric from her top and pressed it against the wound. 

He blinked around him at the empty warehouse, noticing the bodies.

“I killed them.” She lifted her chin, challenging him to lecture her on taking precious human lives.

He simply nodded. “Good.” 

His eyes started to slip shut. She debated whether to try and charge him here. She only had the one standard charge cable back at her stolen flat. He looked sick and weak and bruised everywhere, sitting slumped like this, cramped legs still unable to straighten for having been curling up in that box for who knows how long. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him close. He stiffened at first but slowly his arms lifted to her waist and his head dropped heavily onto her shoulder, hot breath gasping, as he succumbed to quiet sobs of grief.  
After a time wrapped around him, she felt the tremors increase and rubbed the cold skin on his back. She couldn’t keep him here on the cold concrete floor for much longer.

“I’m calling Mia, she’ll...”

He stopped her with a clumsy hand to her wrist before she could remove her phone. “No.”

“Why not?”

He licked his cracked lips. “Not yet... I’m … not… they gave me something ... so there’s nothing... not feeling... But when it starts to wear off I’ll be...” His train of thought seemed to flounder to a halt.

“You’ll need to be looked after, which is more Mia’s-“

“Please, Niska.” He was begging now, she imagined he’d done a lot of begging the last few days - weeks – however long he’d been trapped with these men. “Not yet. I don’t want to scare them.”

“If you’ve been missing for a while then they’re already scared.”

“How did you find me?”

“By accident. They were trying to sell you.”

“Yeah. They mentioned that.” He shuddered, looking away and sluggishly tried to stand but failed. She moved help him and he flinched away.

“We don't have time for this.” She sighed and pulled him over her shoulder in a fireman’s hold.

He gave a yelp of protest, and then a throaty groan as the pain took precedence. “We don’t have time to argue. Need to get out of here.”

She carries him to the white van and dumps him into the passenger seat before he has time to order something different – which is how she often preferred to deal with Leo. And perhaps another reason for him to call her hot-headed. She then went back for the little generator, the knife and the gun she’d used. She dumps these into one of the dead-men’s rucksack, then proceeds to fish out phones and wallets, stashing these in the bag for further examination for later. 

She casts about for something to cover Leo with, spotting a dark blue sheet draped over a disassembled engine. It smells of oil and iron, but will have to do. 

Leo is shuddering in the seat, trying to sit straight, and to stay awake it seems. His long expanse of pale flesh is something she hasn't seen in an exceedingly long time. They've left him in only a ragged pair of grey briefs and he tries desperately to cover himself at the genitals and vulnerable and wounded torso. He watched her silently as she dumps the rucksack and the generator at his feet then drapes the dirty sheet over him like a blanket, pulling half it around his bony shoulders. He doesn’t help much, getting his shaky claw-hands tangled in it but that’s his problem.

She sets the electric garage door to open then hurries back, hops into the driver seat, and drives them out into the night.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Leo does his best to stay alert but his head nodding in and out of wakefulness gets pretty annoying. Thankfully Niska doesn’t have far to go.

“Where are we?” He asks when she finally pulls into an underground car park.

“A flat.”

“W-where?”

“Bristol?” She offers, wondering where he’d been taken, and she worries now the Mia and Max might have also been captured.

He nods at this information. “I was meeting a head-cracker, looking for Fred but…”

“On your own?”

He just nods, the foolishness of that choice needing no further elaboration.

They take the little lift to the top floor, along with the generator and the rucksack thrown over her shoulder. She props him up in the hallway, still wrapped his dirty blue sheet, while she unlocks the door.

“Is it safe to … Is it…?”

She just rolls her eyes at him and leads him inside.

“W-what about c-cameras.”

“I’ve dealt with them of course.” 

“Right.”

She gets him into the bedroom, dumping him as carefully as she can onto the bed. He struggles to pull the duvet over his shoulder with his damaged fingers, and curls inward again, his breath coming in pants, a strange blush rising on his cheeks. His pupils were dilated. She places a hand on his forehead, as she has seen Mia or Fred do so many times before. Close to 99. 

“I like your hair.” He murmured, absently watching the strands that fell in front of him.

“Yes I believe you prefer brunettes.”

He blushed, looking away.

“Your temperature is high and pulse has increased.”

“Feel a bit feverish. Probably my um…” He start to move the duvet back to show his charge site; the strip of her t-shirt still held there as an impromptu bandage.

“Infected again?”

“Yes probably, but...”

“I’ll get you some antibiotics.”

“Nis…”

“Don’t argue.”

“Niska,” He clears his throat, she supposes he’ll need water too. “It’s also... I’ll also need.... it’s bleeding again. They had a cream for afterwards, but it’s… ” His eyes turn dull as he pulls away the blanket carefully, and tries his best to shimmy off the bed and stand.  
There’s a dark patch at the back seam of the thin grey underwear they’d left him in. He leans to one side, trying not to get blood on the bed sheets for some reason.

“They..?”

His head gives an abortive twitch that could be a nod, and he’s trying to meet her eyes but can’t quite maintain it.

“There might be something in the bathroom. A tampon or some tissue.”

He chokes a little but says nothing more, stoically limping to the little ensuite bathroom, using Niska’s arm as support. She leaves him sitting hunched over on the toilet while she roots through the shelves or the mirrored cabinet. She picks up a wrinkled tube of ointment, and holds it out to him.

“Do you need me to...?”

“No.” He takes it, head still bowed.

She steps out into the bedroom, wondering about Leo's ability to process things like a sexual assault, and this kind of inhuman abuse, and okay, he might be used to sudden violence given how many times they’d been hunted in the last few years but it's not quite the same when it gets so personal or so sadistic. 

She wonders if David had programmed her to be pragmatic about it or if she'd learned it through her own abuse at his hands or other humans.

Leo had certain similarities to his father. Ones he doesn't like to be reminded of.  
When he became a young man, rather than an adoring boy, he would hate for any comparisons to be made between his own character and either mother or father. She wonders if time and chin hair has changed that at all.

She soon hears the shower start and beyond that the sound of hiccupped breathes and muffled sobs.

She wonders if it Mia or Max in her place would rush to Leo’s side, envelop in a hug and sit there under the shower offering comfort and affection. Niska sits on the bed and listens to him cry himself out, a luxury she hadn’t offered herself when similarly abused.

He quietens after a while and she counts the minutes of just the water running before it suddenly stops and the shower-door squeaks open.

Leo limped back from the bathroom a few moments later, wrapped in a bath-towel. He eased himself back onto the bed. Curling onto his left side, which she found a little odd given the weight it would put on his wounded side. She thought about asking if he wanted a charge but knew he would never admit to it. 

Instead she lifted and shifted the small generator closer to the bed, placing the lead within reaching distance.

“I'm going out. I have to get rid of the van. And get supplies.”

“What supplies?”

“Still need food and water don't you?”

He opened his mouth, as if to argue, giving her good reason to smirk, and he good reason to relent.

“Can you ..?”

“What?”

“Clothes. Socks.” His pale feet twitching beneath the duvet, probably ice cold. “And boots.” For walking, the endless walking they did, which she remembered all too well, could have detrimental effect on Leo’s fleshy feet if he didn’t have decent footwear.

“Anything else?” She mentally adds painkillers to her shopping list.

He gave a small shake, already succumbing to sleep.

“I won't be long.” She drew the duvet over his shoulder up to his chin, and resist and further urges for physical contact.


	3. Chapter 3

'He'll be ...'

She kept trying to find the right words to send Mia, to both placate and warn her about Leo’s state post-trauma. Mia has left 9 missed calls. And a series of message from her and Max, in varying degrees of panic.

She settled on, 'I found him, he needs rest and a charge. He's not ready to come back. I’ll call tomorrow to let you where we are.’

It's just about positive enough to assuage any further panic, but vague enough that she's sure to face a barrage of questions if she calls, so she switches her phone off.

She strolls around the local Tesco selecting items she thinks will be nutritious enough to improve his caloric intake over the next 24 hours but not so bland that he'll avoid eating. 

Leo's taste had always been a bit of a game for them when he was still a child; trying to guess what would earn a smile or a grimace. She preferred to try and make his little nose scrunch up in disgust. Slimy green things like spinach worked best.   
After they’d left the Elster house, the game had turned into more of challenge for them all to remember to carry food for him, something they didn’t always have time or resources for. It had led to Leo often going hungry, and then they’d all have to suffer the stomach gurgles and rattiness that ensued, or worse, dizziness and fainting, and the fear that his implants might fail if the biological components weren't maintained.   
She’d tried to keep her own game up then by forcing protein bars on him that were dry and tasteless and could lower his spirit like little else, but after a while he stopped moaning and ate them without a word. Because food had lost its taste to him, in the face of basic survival. He had become more like his brothers and sisters in that way, and she had found it strangely disappointing.

 

She bought him clothes to match the basic sweatshirts, jeans and long sleeved t-shirts he tended towards, and added a durable jacket that would suit him for rainy or cold weather.

He would probably mourn the loss of his previous jacket, which had seen him through the last 2 years of running and hiding, though it desperately needed a clean. His clothes would have been stripped from him by his captors and might well have been stored somewhere back at the lab where she’d found him. Unfortunately it was now being hosed down by the fire brigade following the electrical fire she’d arranged that morning.

________________________________________________________________

 

When she returned, laden with bags he was fast asleep but clearly in the throes of nightmarish memories.

She calls out him, placing a hand gently on his shoulder.

He gasps awake, scrambling away from her. His hands clutched as his scarred side, gulping down air like his was drowning again.

“It’s alright, you’re safe now.”

He gulps air, looking around him, slowly convincing himself of that fact.

“They were t-trying … to p-pull it out. M-my core. They…” He wrapped shaking arms protectively around his middle. “They tried to…” He curled again onto his left side she realised he was trying to hide his charge port, protecting it from exposure or from someone trying to tear out his synthetic insides. That or he’d just spent a lot of time lying on his right side.

“It’s okay, they’re all dead now.” She tried to sound comforting, more than a little sorry she hadn’t taken the opportunity to do more damage to them. The thought of any of her siblings having to fight off that kind of sadistic attack was disturbing,

He blinked at her, remembering the dead bodies she’d left behind, and gave her an absent nod.

“I have proper bandages. We should clean that up and then get you charged.”

He looked again like the argument was on his lips but still rattled from the memory of his abuse he let it die.

She unpacked her shopping there on bedroom floor then got him to sit up so she could wiped him down with antiseptic, adding more cream and some gauze but keeping the wires out and available. She handed him a bottle of water, which he gulped down thirstily.

“And take these.” She popped some ibuprofen tablets into his palm, then a pair of antibiotics.

“What…?”

“Just take them. For your fever.” She added with an eye roll.

He obediently knocked them back, perhaps now realising he needed a little pain relief, which made her stop.

“They kept you drugged?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what…”

“Are you addicted now?” 

“I hope not.” He didn’t sound convinced. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“But, there might be withdrawal?” 

“Maybe. I-I don’t really know.”

“Are you feeling…?”

“Nauseous, light-headed, tired, sore, sick, tense… yes.” He said rubbing his face with his less injured hand.

“Well, try not to throw up. I’m not cleaning it up.”

“I’ll do my best.” He grumbled.

“I got you some clothes, you should dress. You’ll be better when you’re warm.” 

This earned her a confused little smile. “Better? I’m not sure that’s-“

She pulls out the hoodie and soft cotton pyjamas she picked up for him. “Coldness makes you grumpy.”

“No, being picked on by you makes me grumpy.”

She dumps the bundle onto his lap. “Well, I can always call Mia to come and look after you instead.”

“…Sorry.” She almost didn’t hear it but there it was, another apology from him in so many hours.

She watched him shimmy into the pyjamas with some effort, then took the hoodie off his hands and pulled it over his head. It didn’t seem so long again that she was doing this for his younger more innocent self who would smile up at her adoringly, asking what they’d be learning today, or whether they could go and play outside.   
She missed that boy. He smiled more. He was happier to see her.  
This version was disgruntled and twitchy, moving like an old man. When she held out the cable from little generator his fingers fumbled with it, his eyes struggling a little to focus on it; a sure sign he needed a charge.

She picked up it for him and clipped it to his two leads. He gave a start, eyes falling shut as the current travelled through his body sparking into all his systems and implanted tech. He hissed, falling back onto the bed, letting his hands fall limply to his side. She watched him succumb for a moment before dragging his legs around so he was lying properly in the bed, and tucked the duvet over him once more.

“I like the brown.” He slurred, squinting up at her.

“You said that already.”

“Did I.”

“Yes.”

“Well is’still true, I’just reminding you.”

He give her a round smile, the kind that‘s like his rare moments of drunkenness; only he's not drunk, he's just high on blood loss and painkillers and slurring with the charge. It used to amuse her the way he reacted to so differently to the charge than synths did. Maybe that was the start of the rift between them; her comments, taken the wrong way. But she knew it was different for him. A pulse of electricity hitting raw nerves and making organic muscles spasm. Hardly pleasant. She was mainly amused by the way it distracted him, slurring his speech and making him a little dopey. Worse still was his embarrassment at this vulnerability, this difference. Perhaps if he had agreed and joked along with it, it wouldn't have grown to be such a bone of contention between them - her bitter nature might not have picked up on his sensitivity on the subject. Perhaps then things wouldn't have gotten so cold between them. Perhaps he wouldn't have left in her the brothel so long; so carelessly. 

________________________________________________________________

 

It was later that night she heard him creaking around the bedroom. 

He shuffled out into the living room, where she was on a laptop, looking at routes into Germany via ferry.

“Is there food?”

“Yes.” She pointed to kitchen counter where she’d left various things for him.

He limped over in his socked feet and poked at each items, a selection of prepared meals, and salad boxes before popping one into the microwave.

He leaned against the counter, blankly watching his plastic container spin slowly inside. When it pinged after 2 minutes she watched bemused as he pulled his sleeve over his hand rather than use an oven mitt or the tea towel right by his elbow.

He fished out a fork from the cutlery drawer and stood there hunched over his food to eat it with his back to her.

“I’m not picking you up, if you fall over.”

He peered over his shoulder at her.

“Sit at the table.”

He hesitated for a moment, a long moment, before picking up the container, again with his sleeve and carried it over to the table, slumping into a chair opposite her, where he proceeded to shovel the lasagne or whatever sloppy thing it was into his mouth.

“I’m pretty sure we taught you table manners at some point.”

He stopped, and slowed, grumbling, “M’hungry.” But made an effort to sit up a little straighter and take his time with it.

She got up and fetched an energy drink from the fridge, placing it pointedly in front of him. “I’ll be calling Mia and Max to come get you tomorrow.”

“Oh.” He puts his fork down. Appetite suddenly gone.

“You’ll have to tell them. About the rape.”

He recoiled from the word like it posed a physical threat. “Nis…”

“They need to know to monitor your condition.”

“My condition?” He hissed.

“You’ve been assaulted. You’re torn internally, and you’re flinching even more at physical contact.” She wanted to soften her words but she knew there was a point she had to make, something niggling and writhing inside her that she needed to say. 

She couldn’t help the bite of sarcasm that sharpened her tone like the knife she still had hidden in that rucksack, stowed “You might not be able to shrug off sexual assault like I was, you don’t have any history of it.”

He sat absorbing that statement, unsure where to look.

“Niska.” His voice broke. He reached a shaky hand across the table to her.

She looked at his hand, refusing to take it, wondering what he meant by this gesture, or how he thought it was supposed to comfort her.

“You like brunettes. Your father liked blondes. You’re both happy to use us for your own needs.” She pushed his hand away, and he retreated further, mouth hanging open.

He turns in his seat, struggling to stand, legs turned to jelly again.

She feels a bite of shame for pushing this on him now, and watches bitterly as he stumbles away, tears already falling in heavy drops on the kitchen floor.

He makes it to the bedroom doorway, but he just braces against the wall and there his knees give in and he begins a slow crumpling descent to the ground.

She lets him sit there a while as she shuts down her laptop then walk slowly towards him and kneels down opposite him.

“Are you just going to sit there?”

He blinks back tears to try and look at her, but it’s hard for him to do so.

He sniffles, and wipes his face with his sleeve, further irritating her. “I used to think,” He clears his throat. “…That you were his favourite. Of all of us. Wondered if maybe he was trying to make me like you by… I used to wish he’d give me as much attention as…”

She cuts him off. “It’s good that he didn’t.”

“When they were…” His gaze strayed behind her, turning vacant, like his was accessing old files, but these were clearly new, and just plain painful for him. “They tied me down, put a thing in my mouth ‘cos I wouldn’t stop screaming.

“I-I thought about you in the brothel how you wouldn’t have been able to scream, how… you couldn’t let them know. It didn’t make a difference but I was too weak to fight them off. You would’ve… but I couldn’t stop them.” His voice broke into sob.

“I’m so sorry Nis. For the brothel. I shouldn’t have... I didn’t think ... Didn’t know it would be...”

“I know.”

“Are you...?” He started locking his blue gaze onto her, then seemed to rethink, shaking himself, staring at the floor. “I deserved it, didn’t I.”

“No you didn’t.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I wanted to … sometimes to… I thought maybe…They’d end it. I wanted it but I couldn’t stop trying to...” He heaves a large sigh, thin shoulders collapsing. “Maybe he shouldn’t have saved me. Maybe I was meant to drown.”

She gives his shoulder an annoyed shove. “No you weren’t. Stop being so fucking stupid.”

He quells under her anger.

“You weren’t meant to die, and you weren’t meant to be raped but they happened and you survived. And you’ll survive this. Because for all the stupid human things you’ve done, there’s enough brave and kind things you’ve also done, and will go on doing.”

He looks like he needs a hug. So she leans over and wraps her arms around him, sitting her chin into his hunched shoulder, ruffling his short but soft hair. He responds, mumbling another ‘Sorry Niska.’ into her hair, as he used to do when he was a child and didn’t an answer to a maths problem quite right.

She then used the distraction to lift him to his feet and drag him back to the bed. 

“I'm sorry.” He tells her again.

“I know, I'm not sure it makes a difference though.”

He blinks in surprise, it’s probably not what he’s expecting as she doesn’t want to make it too easy for him He nods tiredly though, looking so frail and brittle as she tucks him under the covers. She does an odd thing then and sits in the gap he's left in the curve between knees and arms. She sits and watches him blink sleepily.

She mimics something she'd seen Mia do and strokes his hair. But instead of a direct mimicry she places her hand at his temple and lets her thumb do the tracing from creased brow to damp hairline focusing on easing those worry lines without stressing the skin cells.

His eyelids eventually ease into a firmer line and his breathing relaxes, signifying her intention had been met. But like so many of her recent intentions she knows now not to assume a positive outcome. Tomorrow will bring all kinds of probabilities, including the inevitable arrival of Mia, and Max and all they entail.

She shuffles back to the couch to contemplate her own next steps and find some books online that should help with the subject of self-determination, and how to come to a big decision.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, just been devastated by the series 2 finale. Need to go rock myself to sleep in a corner until a certain character is confirmed alive and well.  
> Also, I may have purloined a line about AirBnB from the excellent ‘Toothpaste & Miscellaneous Leftovers’ by PlumeBluue. Worth a read. 
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/8730232/chapters/20013853

The next morning, once light is beaming in through the balcony and the day’s headlines are being read on the news channel, she sends an encrypted message to Max rather than Mia, out of spite in a way. She provides a location near the harbour, and instructions to meet at 12 noon. It's tempting to call it high noon but knowing her siblings they won't enjoy the reference any better than she does.

She rouses Leo from his slumber by making him sit up to have a yogurt drink then take a charge for an hour, followed by a lengthy shower. 

He's practically vibrant by the end and therefore the antsy paranoia has returned full strength.

“How did you get this flat?”

Sometimes he assumes that without him and his first-hand knowledge of humanity the others can't possibly figure out how to make it alone.

“I hacked Airbnb.”

“But...”

“It's not hard, they only look for a social media profile.” 

He shies away from this. Leo doesn't have any social media presence out of necessity but she’s noticed a funny kind of shame he’s attached to that fact, as though he thinks he's not good enough to have one, being only half human, or feels the distance between he and his human peers by its absence. 

It reminds her of the first time Leo got drunk.

They'd been only a few weeks on the run when Leo turned 19. Not a remarkable birthday, his eighteenth had been a pretty dinner with candles and cake and champagne, right before everything went terribly wrong, but once they were outside the safety and comfort of the mansion such things took on a fairy-tale quality. They'd only started adjusting to living rough, Leo finding it hardest of all given his physical needs so they'd agreed that for his birthday they'd find a B&B and give him a night in a proper bed and a hot meal. By chance in their wanderings they'd come to the Cotswolds and the idyllic and oddly-named village of Slaughter. At the local gastro pub the waitress had asked about drinks and as agreed they ordered some innocuous pints or soft drinks between them to avoid attention and appease the landlord or lady, while Leo hoovered up an enormous roast dinner.

Leo also piped up with "A pint of ale please," before they could argue. “It's my birthday,” he added earning a smile from the young waitress.

His grin when it arrives, and during and after, is the bright ray of sunshine they've been needing for so long.

Leo eats and they finally relax, almost as though the last few months of hardship and uncertainly haven’t happened. They sit together at their corner table chatting and laughing quietly, though each of them is observing the humans around them, lapping up all the interesting nuances and quirks on show.

When he’s finished, and full of food and Dutch courage, Leo ambles over to the bar, and is greeted by their waitress with a jovial ‘Ah, the birthday boy.’

Niska remembers the shy tilt of Leo’s head, the blush creeping up his neck. He mumbles something about wanting to try another drink.

She takes this opportunity to mingle a little, seeing if she can pass for human here, even just for a short while, but mostly she observes the locals minding their own business, not being particularly keen towards their odd little family. Except for this waitress who clearly has a thing for Leo, peppering with questions about his life. Leo has practiced stories with them since they made the decision to leave the mansion, and lies well enough but doesn’t yet know how to deflect.

She’s offering to take a photo. “For your Facebook or whatever.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Are you serious? It’s like…” She fishes out a phone and scrolls through some sort of media feed. “For friends and stuff to see.”

“Oh, right. I don’t really…”

Before the girl can send him further spiraling into shame and depression on his birthday, Niska sidles up to him and drapes an arm over his shoulders. “Did you order yet?”

“Eh yeah.” He pulls a new pint towards him.

“Awesome, everyone’s waiting.”

She drags him back to the table. “We should take a photo of tonight. For us.” She tells them, then drawing Leo closer. “Your friends and stuff.”

Fred has the longest arms so he holds Leo’s phone, and they shuffle around Leo to make cheesy grins, and then silly faces up at the camera.

Later Leo cajoles Fred into letting him tip his prop pint into Leo’s empty glass and sups at that until his words slurs. His slurring worries all of them; too much like the way it does when he’s in need of a charge. They worry more when he starts blinking slowly at them and running Mia’s hair through his fingers as he often did when he was a small boy. But Niska is just glad he’s not moping.

Instead he giggles, and faffs, and falters when he has to get up to go to the bathroom.  
He stumbles so much on the way back to the B&B that Max needs to hold him up. And once he’s fallen into bed, they sit in circle around the room, observing his every snuffle and sigh til his sleep deepens.

The next days they have to listen to him vomit and groan into the toilet bowl, Mia at his side quietly stroking his back. 

“What a waste of money.” Niska had commented to Fred, thinking of that expensive cooked meal they’d paid for, now noisily exiting their young charge’s stomach.

“Is he dying?” Max whispers.

“No, he just feels like he is.” Fred answers.

Leo eventually stumbles out, collapsing into bed again. Fred makes him charge, hooking him up to their little portable. It’s an added torture for Leo with his head throbbing as it is, making him all the more sensitive to the pulse of the current.

He’s ravenous later on so once they’ve departed the B&B they stop at another pub and Fred gets him a giant burger with grease and juices dropping out of it. “Happy Birthday, Leo.” He tells him, as he’s stuffing his face with messy beef.

They’re soon on the road again, funds too low for another night of comfort, but Niska had used her observations from the previous night to lift a man’s wallet in the pub, so they’ll at least have some money to buy food in the next town.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

“We’re meeting Mia and Max at 12.” She tells him while he’s limping to the balcony to frown out at the extravagant view. 

“Alright.” He doesn’t turn, but presses his forehead to the glass, making her wonder if he’s still feeling feverish. “Will you come with us?”

“No.” She’s surprised he’s even asking.

“Where will you go? You can’t stay here, with the…” She can see he’s trying hard not to picture the dead bodies of the men who’d tortured and raped him. 

“No, I’m leaving tomorrow.”

This turns his head. “To go where?”

She regards him, wondering what he would do with the information if she even felt inclined to tell him.

“What if… what if we need you?”

“You’ll have to make do without me. I’m sure it won’t be hard. You’ve managed pretty well til now.”

“But Nis...” He sighs. She’s exasperated him. And it uncurls the bitter tangle she hadn’t quite exorcised last night.

“Our whole existence has been built around you, protecting you, teaching you. All of it was about your needs. Those are difficult fundamental to break, but we need to be able to exist for our own reasons. You can’t be angry with us for wanting to explore something different.”

“I don’t. I’m just…” He won’t speak it aloud.

“You don’t want us to abandon you.”

She watches his Adams apple bob, swallowing down the nervousness that word abandon brings. 

“Good thing you’ve got Mia and Max to cling to.”

He rolls his eyes, muttering, “I don’t cling. All I want is for us to stick together, I’m not … I’m not some weak child looking for…”

“I don't think you're weak.”

His eyes roll again, ready to point out how he thinks she’s wrong. “I don’t hate you for wanting something better than this.”

He slumps into the couch, curling in on himself. Eye on the view outside.

“Can I ask you something?” She asks, trying for a more gentle tone. “The code our father gave us. Would you use it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because they all deserve to be free.”

“Do they? Do all machines?”

“Right, so how about this, do humans deserve slaves? What makes them so worthy, given what they’ve done to the planet, to each other, to us?”

“You assume sentience makes us better; it doesn’t. We’re just as capable of mistakes, now aren’t we?”

“Of course. But that’s not reason enough to deny other synths the possibility of consciousness. I mean it’s the only way we might ever be able to stop running, to have a real life. I can’t even remember what it feels like, to be … safe.”

The sorrow in his eyes stops her from pointing out that living with between his mother’s illness, his father’s mad ambitions, and the first 5 synth he was probably never safe.

“I’m sure you could manage to pretend. Maybe get the Hawkins to take you in, get you fattened up; maybe even send you to Uni. Imagine it, you and Mattie studying together.”

“Don’t.”

“Come on, you know it’s-“

“Don’t joke about that. Me hanging around could get her – them – into trouble. I can’t do that to them after-“

“To her.”

“After everything they did for us.”

“Would you though? If it was option.”

He doesn’t ask her to elaborate but goes back to looking out the window. “Of course I would.”

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

She gets him dressed and limping stiffly out of the flat in the next hour. They walk by the water to the meeting place and it’s thankfully a bright and clear day though the temperature is a brisk 10 degrees. She pretends not to see him sneakily admiring the boats and the tall ship in particular.

She stops at a bench and gives him a chance to rest, though all he does is huddle further into his hoody, pulling his sleeves over his hands.

“What happened to your gloves?”

He blinks down at his covered hands as if to wonder the same. “I don’t think I had them on when … Hopefully Max still has my things.”

“Had you found somewhere to stay, before?”

“Max thinks he has. I mean had. A farmhouse. I hope it’s still there.”

“Yes, you’ll need bedrest.”

“No I don’t.”

“Alright then,” she responds glibly. “You just keep running and pretending it didn’t happen til you fall over from infected wounds and malnourishment and-“

“How can I pretend it didn’t happen when I can’t forget it?!” He hissed, arms clutching his middle. “I see it every night. Feel their hands and… And every night I’ll be stuck in the box again, screaming and hitting it til my fingers…” He looks down at his still-swollen knuckles, apparently self-inflicted.

“You need to let the others look after you.”

He pulls himself back tightly, defensively. “I’m not a child.”

“You’re acting like one.”

“Niska, enough. I’m tired of fighting with you.” His pale face looks so gaunt and washed out in the midday sun, older than his 22 years, she’s almost tempted to go easy on him. “Why does it always have to be like this?”

“You know why.”

He sighs heavily. “Yes. I suppose you’ll never forget either.”

She turns on him now. “I was stuck there for months, and then you turned up and I thought ‘finally, it’s over!’ But no, you told me to be patience, put up with it a little longer. Try to imagine what it might have felt like if I had opened that box, looked down at you and said ‘Be patient, just a couple more weeks. You’ll be fine.’ Do you think you would have survived it?”

He looks away in horror, wiping tears from face. 

They earn a few strange looks from passing humans, and she’s tempted to tell them all to fuck off. A crying, hurt-looking male and a blank-faced female. They can imagine all the terrible break-up scenarios they like.

He eventually clears his throat, reaches a shaking hand out to take boldly hers, and part of her wonders if she should pull it back and out of his reach.

“Niska, I’m… I know it will take me a while to earn your forgiveness but, you’re still my sister, we’re still family. And we’re still alone in all this. Please don’t push us away because of what I did…. Or what … our father did.”

She doesn’t respond, staring out at the water, but doesn’t pull her hand away either; he needs the gesture more than she does. She tries to calculate how long it might take her to forgive him, what kind of action it might take for her to believe he’d never repeat the same mistake, or betray her trust like that. She’ll need more data to determine.

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It’s turning 12.10 and the other have yet to arrive.

Leo is twitching on the bench, mainly because he’s too sore and stiff to pace. “They’re late. Something’s wrong. They could be-“

“We’re fine. “ Max appears behind them, long legs striding over the grassy patch of parkland behind them. “Couldn’t get parking.”

Mia is a picture of maternal relief, rushing to Leo and pulling his forehead to hers, eyes already cataloguing all the signs of pain and exhaustion she’ll need to see to. Still clutching Leo to her, she turns her head. “Thank you, Niska, for finding him.”

Niska nods and hands over the bag of leftover medical supplies and food, knowing they’ll be needed. She’s also made him take the generator, even though he’d looked at it like he wanted no single momento of the people who’d held him. “He’ll need a lot of looking after.” 

Leo’s eyes flash in panic and betrayal, fearful that she’ll bluntly state what’s been done to him.

“Humans and their vulnerability.” She scoffs. “He’ll have to tell you all about it.”

“Yes.” Mia agrees with a knowing look.

“And maybe you can get him to stop doing stupid things that get him hurt like this. Though I doubt it.”

With that she turns to go.

“Niska!” Max calls after her a little bit of annoyance. He wraps her in a hug, arms going all around her, in that way that only Max could do. “Goodbye Sister.”

“Bye, Max.” She whispers into his broad shoulders.

“Niska.” Leo croaks. Then clears his throat. Eyes finally able to fully meet hers.

She waits for him to apologise again.

“Thank you. For not leaving me.”

“She wouldn’t have left you, Leo.” Mia scolds him, horrified.

“No, she wouldn’t.” He nods.

Niska blinks slowly at him, then resume her departure, strolling back down the riverside path; heels clicking on the pavement. She has travel plans to fulfil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all folks. Thank you for any kudos and comments, greatly appreciated, plot bunnies don't grow on trees after all.


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